Frequently Asked Questions

The Basics

Climate-KIC is the EU’s main climate innovation initiative. It supports entrepreneurs, businesses, students and researchers bring their clean tech innovations, products and services to the market. To learn more about our activities across Europe visit www.climate-kic.org.

We are a clean tech startup accelerator run in more than 15 locations across Europe. Here in the German-speaking geography comprising Germany, Switzerland and Austria, teams are eligible for up to €95k of financial support, business coaching and mentoring, investor matchmaking, events and training. We help you build a scalable clean-tech business, accelerating you to enter the market successfully and lever investment

There is no catch. If you are eligible to apply and succeed in convincing us that you have the best technology solution to tackle a climate problem, you can access this financial support as well as all other benefits on offer.

The programme consists of three fixed term 6-month phases, after which you leave the programme and become alumni. If you apply for and are successful in completing each stage, we will have supported you for a period of 18 months.

You do not have to be located in one of these cities, but you should apply to the accelerator city closest to where your business is. In Berlin, we offer co-working offices to startups and prefer teams to relocate to be part of the peer network there.

We love a good international team, but can only support startups based in Germany, Switzerland or Austria (DACH). If you plan to establish or have a legal entity outside of these countries, you should consider applying to one of our other accelerator locations. If you have already completed a stage of the accelerator elsewhere in Europe, you are still eligible to apply to the DACH programme for the relevant next stage if you wish to relocate here.

No. Within the Start-up Accelerator Programme, we do not support company innovation or intrapreneurship projects. Your venture should be independent from existing companies to become eligible for the programme. If you are interested in corporate innovation, have a look here: http://www.climate-kic.org/for-businesses/

The Application

We have two open Calls for Applications each year - one starting on 1st July and the one starting on 1st January. You will be able to access the link to the application form on the website as soon as the call is open.

Please note the key application phase dates - we cannot be flexible on the pitch days. If invited to pitch, the co-founders should make plans to travel to the relevant location on the dates specified. You should prepare a 5-minute presentation (usually with PDF slides) and be ready to face a jury panel in a 10-15 minute Q&A afterwards. Unfortunately we cannot cover travel costs for this.

We receive hundreds of potentially brilliant technology proposals but can only accept a limited number of startups at any one time. The winning combination is difficult to define, but rest assured our mandate is to help de-risk today’s technologies and teams so they become tomorrow’s climate market leaders.

Munich Re / ERGO Side Call

You only have to apply once to either Call here and will automatically be considered for both application processes. The Munich Re / ERGO accelerator programme will be embedded within the regular Climate-KIC accelerator, so you will receive 100% the same support, with some additional benefits from the cooperation on top.
How are the participants for the Munich Re / ERGO accelerator selected?
All online applications are initially judged in the same way by a jury of external experts and Climate-KIC staff applying the following criteria:

Cultural fit (we want you to exchange with your peers, interact with our network, engage with the ecosystem)

After that our corporate partners at Munich Re / ERGO will screen the shortlist for interesting business models they would like to learn more about. We will notify you in advance of the pitch session so you can finetune your pitch to not only convince our jury but also our corporate partners.

Absolutely yes. Your chances are exactly the same in the selection process.

We also understand that in some very specific circumstances you might want to keep your online application confidential from our corporate partners. In this case please write an email to: bjorn.grindberg@climate-kic.org